Coal is poisonous business. It pushes away every other sort of local economic activity that was once near a new coal mine. It uses vast quantities of water. Australian Governments have treated communities near proposed coal mines and their extensions like dirt. Something to be shovelled aside. Mines destroy communities.

New coal mines are getting bigger every time, as they are digging deeper, must remove more "overburden", and destroy more landscape and wildlife. Coal mines have been given immunity from damage caused by their activities in water catchment areas of Sydney. The same areas where ordinary people cannot set foot in, or face extreme fines. The results of the long wall coal mining have been large cracks in rocks, draining the swamps that filter the waters in the catchment uplands, draining river beds and lakes. Water that does come through the new underground pathways created by the coal mining is heavily contaminated with poisonous heavy metals.

Alan Jones : "The elephant in the room is the mining industry. The mining industry is the upper house of Australian Parliaments. Nobody seems to be prepared to do anything without getting the sanction and approval of the mining industry."

The representatives of mining industry congregate together in peak lobby bodies, such as "The Minerals Council of Australia", and the "Business Council of Australia". From here they dictate and write policy for any matters that affect the mining industry to the major political parties. The campaign against the carbon tax was largely orchestrated by the mining industry. The campaign against taxes on mining profits was entirely funded from the mining industry. The mining industry has altogether too much political power in Australia. Yet they make up less than 5% of the Australian economy, and much less for employment. The key factor is the large amounts of money available for peddling political influence, and media access, which is a drop in a bucket from the vast earnings going overseas to foreign corporations.

As one resident of the vanquished town of Acland in Queensland noted, family members gave their lives for Australia in world wars, to ensure the security of their farming communities. Now Australia has sold them out, as foreign interests buy rights to mine the land and their communities are destroyed.

Coal mines are family of mechanized beasts. Huge metal monster shovels carve up the earth after blasting. Monster dump trucks move the overburden from one giant hole to fill in another. Large volumes of water are required to wash the dirt from the coal. The water becomes undrinkable and poisonous to wildlife. The most scarce resources in Australia, necessary for our healthy food and drinking water, are being sacrificed for a few decades of profit for a few capitalists, and a good life for a few politicians with their hands in the mining till.

The conclusions of climate scientists are irrefutable. The burning of fossil fuels, of which coal is traditionally the dirtiest, is causing deadly Anthropogenic Global Warming. It is the fossil fuel industry, and their filthy rich sycophants and parasites, which stand in the way of carbon burning shutdown, and oppose a replacement of dirty fossil fuel energy  by longer lasting clean renewable energy.  We need to topple this dirty short term fossil fuel empire in order to have a longer term future. This means the removal of the current fossil fuel governments in Australia.

Toppling the Fossil Fuel Empire

Undermining Australia - Coal vs Communities